Worth their weight in gold

WE’RE waiting for the stars to arrive when the first distress message comes through. Charlize Theron might be late because her house is surrounded by paparazzi and she can’t get out. Then a puzzling email warns that Michael Fassbender isn’t coming after all.

So, of course, Theron is the first to arrive at Smashbox Studios in West Hollywood, where we’re holding this year’s Oscar Roundtable. She’s fighting off a cold and keeps saying she “sounds like a man”. If so, not any man I’ve ever met. By the time Fassbender blows in — the email was apparently a prank — George Clooney and Viola Davis and Tilda Swinton have already shown up, and the lovefest has begun. At many previous roundtables the talent was often meeting each other for the first time, but this year our lineup has a lot of shared history. George and Viola (sorry, but it was a first-name kind of day) are old pals; they worked together on Solaris a decade ago, and he lent her his Lake Como villa for her honeymoon. George and Tilda are good buddies, too, having bonded making Michael Clayton and Burn After Reading. Charlize and Michael just spent months together shooting Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic Prometheus at Pinewood Studios outside London.